


Becoming the Hunted

by yeti_butt



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, F/F, My First AO3 Post, No Smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-08
Updated: 2017-01-08
Packaged: 2018-09-15 17:09:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,184
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9247358
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yeti_butt/pseuds/yeti_butt
Summary: It's New Year's Eve after the "Reflections" comic. Several heroes have responded to the recall, including Lena Oxton and Fareeha Amari. Lena is on patrol in Madrid, Spain for suspicious activity, but it's been a boring night in spite of the parties... so far.





	1. Chapter 1

 

\---

 _“Au revoir, mon_ _amie,” he called up the stairs._

_“Au revoir,” she whispered. The door slammed shut._

_\---_

Lena closed her eyes for a moment to savor the crisp winter wind that further disheveled her short mess of hair. She didn’t get much alone time these days. Nearly every minute at the base since recall was spent training, doing paperwork, running errands, helping with chores, or offering her company to fellow agents. Cheering up the others was getting easier and more difficult at the same time. In a way it was easier because she was learning more about them and what they were comfortable talking about, what she should avoid mentioning… or _who_ she should avoid mentioning.

But it was harder because there was less to be cheerful about. Tensions were rising and it was becoming clear to her and the rest of the agency that a second Omnic Crisis was brewing. Anti-omnic attacks were becoming so frequent that police forces in major cities had to create entire departments to handle the investigations. Old wounds from the first Omnic Crisis were reopening and starting to fester. The assassination of Mondatta six months earlier had been a major blow to the movement for peace. Lena still couldn’t believe it. She had been there. She had been capable of stopping the tragedy before it happened. At the very least she could have captured Widowmaker, but she let her emotions get the better of her. Maybe if she hadn’t been so juvenile during her fight with Widowmaker, if she’d been more focused… Sometimes she wished her recall worked like the time travel in old movies did.

Lena sighed and opened her eyes. The sky above her was a starless off-black from the illuminated city beneath it. Shouting and cheers bloomed sporadically throughout the evening from the many New Year’s Eve parties around the neighborhood.

“How are things looking on your side, Tracer?” Fareeha Amari asked over the com.

“Nothin’ to report, love,” Lena chirped, mustering up her trademark enthusiasm. “Reckon we could swing by a coupla’ these parties if we felt up to it!”

“Perhaps,” Fareeha chuckled then resumed her usual professionalism. “Things are all clear on the West side as well. We should be good to head out in another hour or so. Are you clear to rendezvous at site B around 0300?”

“You got it!”

With that, Lena resumed her patrol. After twenty minutes of the same unsuspicious activity she’d been logging since 01800, she decided to begin the long walk towards the rendezvous point.

“Hey, is that Tracer?!” someone shouted as she stepped out of the alley she’d taken a shortcut through. Embarrassed and not feeling up to getting swarmed, Lena recalled before whoever spotted her could point her out. Keeping out of the public eye on such a busy night would be impossible… or would it? Her eyes rose to the rooftops and she grinned. She totally wasn’t supposed to roof blink anymore, but who would know?

Step, step, step, _blink_! Step, step, step, step, step, _blink_! Step, step, _blink_!

Lena whooped as she jumped the space between two office buildings. She was making great time. Regrettably, she couldn’t blink the whole way due to the limits of her chronoaccelerator. She could feel that it was actually starting to warm up already from her bit of fun. Maybe she could talk to Winston about cooling pads again. He’d said they would be too bulky for combat but if she was only-

 _PHWAM!_ A gunshot pierced the night air.

Lena blinked automatically at the sound, but she hadn’t been expecting an attack, hadn’t seen _anything_. The surprise of it barely affected her superior reaction time, but that slight hesitation of 0.05 seconds was all the difference.

As she blinked sideways, she felt the bullet slice through her left arm where the chronoaccelerator had been at the moment of the shot. The lead ate into her with a searing, fiery pain that forced her to cry out in agony. She managed to fall into a roll and take cover behind an AC unit atop the roof, but there wasn’t much time to recover.

 _Fwiiiiiiiip, click, clank._ What that… a grappling hook?

“No,” Lena whispered in horror. “No way.”

Two sharp clicks of stiletto heels on concrete and a sultry chuckle confirmed her fear: Widowmaker.

“ _Bonsoir, chérie_ ,” the sniper purred, strutting across the open space towards Lena’s position. “ _Vous ne pouvez pas cacher de moi…_ Come out and play.”

Lena shuddered against the fear that bubbled in her gut at the sound of the woman’s voice. From her spot behind the AC unit she could see a small fire escape about fifteen meters away. Blinking to it would mean travelling parallel to Widowmaker, but she didn’t have much of an alternative. She cautiously touched the center of her chronoaccelerator. It was still warm, but it had a few blinks left before it would need a longer cooling off period.

When Widowmaker was five meters from her cover, she took off towards her escape route. The first blink brought her half way to the stairs. Just one more and-

_Fwiiiiiiiip, click-_

Lena shrieked as the claws of Widowmaker’s grappling hook dug into the flesh of her right leg. Despite the close quarters and unsure of how far she could go back, she had no choice but to recall. The world around her stopped momentarily as she felt her body twist and shift back, but she could only manage to turn back three measly seconds against the pain of her overheating chronoaccelerator. The world around her resumed and she found herself standing directly in front of the Talon agent.

Widowmaker’s conditioning didn’t fail her. As Lena materialized in front of her, she used her rifle to smack her opponent in the face.

Lena hit the roof. Her head spun and her vision was blurry. The chronoaccelerator was hot against her chest.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this is my first post! Let me know if you have any feedback at all! I was sort of at a dead end with this piece for a while, but I have a few more ideas on how to continue since I wrote most of this before Reflections actually came out (it was still set on New Year's Eve so I lucked out on that haha). I've only written this and the second chapter so far, but I will definitely make time to continue if I get nice feedback for it!


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lena is trapped in Widowmaker's clutches- literally.

_\---_

_Purple flowers bloomed atop the delicate alabaster of her skin; thin scars lined her sickly legs like shallow dunes in the sand._

_\---_

Lena wheezed beneath the hands squeezing her neck.

 “You don’t… have to do this,” the pilot rasped, struggling to breathe. “Plea-”

“You really are a _foolish_ girl,” Widowmaker snarled, tightening her grip. “The audacity you have to call yourselves heroes is unbelievable. What are you? Just a cast of celebrities pseudo-fighting under _stage lights_.”

Black spots dotted Lena’s vision and tears began to form. She couldn’t die, not now. She couldn’t leave Emily. Her partner deserved so much more than a flag and a letter. There was so much she wanted to say to her still. She wanted to grow old with her. She-

Widowmaker’s smile grew. “Are you going to cry, _chérie_?”

“I’m so sorry, Emily,” Lena whispered. Her voice so faint the woman on top of her had only just heard it.

Widowmaker froze. The words stopped as quickly as they had flooded out.

Lena quickly took advantage of her slackened grip. Releasing her uninjured arm from where it was pinned behind her, she smashed the trigger on one of Widow’s venom mines still holstered to the assassin’s wrist. The toxic gas spewed into its wearer’s face and Lena ripped her hands from her throat. Widowmaker hacked and coughed as she rolled off Lena and clawed at her wrist, trying to detach the broken mine, but the gas blurred her vision and numbed her fingers making the task nearly impossible.

Lena jumped to her feet and sprinted to the edge of the roof. After a brief hesitation she blinked again onto a fire escape running down the building across the alley. In a matter of seconds she was on the cobbled street.

She sprinted, jumped, and whenever possible, blinked until she was absolutely certain that Widowmaker wasn’t following her. Lena slowed her pace to a brisk walk as she approached a crowded public area. She touched her bloodied arm and grimaced. She must have been aiming for her chronoaccelerator. It had missed its intended mark, but the bullet had still hit directly to the right of it, slicing through part of her bicep. At least it was a clean hit, no bullet fragments from what she could tell.  

She ducked into a corner shop and bought a hoodie to protect against being recognized by another civilian. Infrared vision would probably still pin point her chronoaccelorator with laughable ease, but she didn’t want to be detected by anything less. Moving through the crowd had always been easy for her. She let the current of New Year’s Eve party goers carry her through the streets. Autonomously drifting between groups towards the rendezvous point, her mind was left to wander.

Talon’s power was growing. Tonight’s mission was barely mentioned on base. Only she, Fareeha, Winston, and Athena knew it was even taking place at all. How in the bloody hell had Talon caught wind of it? She’d suspected that there was a mole in Overwatch, but even when the mission was a secret from her own team mates the information was somehow comprised. Fareeha wasn’t a possibility, that’s why she, along with Lena, was assigned.

The mission itself was technically low priority, but it was marked as a high priority escort mission on every document with no indication that it was actually an unsubstantial patrol for suspicious activity. Winston had hinted to her and Fareeha over the briefing that it was more of control test to find the leak.

She wasn’t an expert in espionage, but even she could guess what that meant. At best, some of Athena’s files were leaked. At worst, her entire system was compromised. That would mean security cameras on the base, agent files, mission details, and who knows what else was in Talon’s clutches. If that were really the case, Athena would have to be shut down. At least it was evidence that one of her fellow agents, one of her friends, wasn’t secretly plotting against them all.

Lena jumped when someone behind her cracked a new year’s popper. For a split second, she’d thought it was Widow’s rifle again. Her heart raced and she walked faster through the mass of people.

The scare turned her thoughts to the Talon agent. She had grown used to the psychological warfare their agents often used. Blackmail and casual threats against civilians were now expected when dealing the terrorist organization.

But what had been that look in the sniper’s eyes? Widowmaker was well known for being a cold, emotionless killing machine, but her apology to Emily appeared to have touched a nerve.

_Appeared_ , Lena reminded herself, shaking her head. Trusting anything a Talon agent did was idiotic. Just because she couldn’t see what Widow had to gain by looking at her like that didn’t mean she should trust it.

Yet there was something about the exchange that left her with the smallest doubt. She couldn’t help it. Frustrated, Lena pressed her lips together and hurried inside the subway station. She hadn’t even meant to call out Emily’s name…

“Oxford!” Lena heard a familiar voice half-whisper from behind her as she reached the platform. She couldn’t help smiling at that silly nickname Fareeha had come up with. She turned to see the Egyptian woman catching up to her. She appeared to be in civilian clothes, but was actually wearing kevlar and a handgun beneath her jacket. The Raptora system was better suited for nights without so many fireworks.

 The two women walked nonchalantly towards the ticket booths, but continued past until they were inside one of the maintenance tunnels. After checking for tails, Lena pulled down her hood and filled her friend in on what had happened. Fareeha looked alarmed, but remained quiet until Lena recounted the night’s events up to the present moment (just as she would have to do later when she was filling in her report).

When she finished, Fareeha nodded, but was otherwise quiet. Lena had the sneaking suspicion that if she didn’t have a nasty looking gunshot wound, she’d be getting a lecture.

“Well,” Fareeha finally responded. “Let’s just focus on getting you to a hospital. You must be in a lot of pain. Can you even move your arm?”

“Uh, I think it’d be best if Angela looked after me,” she said, purposefully ignoring the question. “I can make it back to the base. It’s only a twenty minute flight if we hurry, right?”

“Are you positive? There’s a clinic about seven kilometers from-”

“It’s New Year’s Eve, love. Not gonna be a lotta room in a city hospital with all the partying and stuff, right?”

Fareeha sighed. “ _Alright_ , but if that gets infected you make sure Angela knows whose idea this was.”

            Lena smiled softly. It was sort of a joke between agents that everybody avoided injuring themselves primarily to escape Dr. Ziegler’s lectures on self-care. “Plus…” she muttered, glancing around the tunnel for eavesdroppers. “We don’t know if _she_ was alone. Probably be best to get outta here quick as we can, yeah?”

            “You’re right. We should try to catch the next train headed towards Getafe.”

            “Peachy.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (see Chapter 1 notes!)


End file.
